BharatPe is the 19th Indian startup to become Unicorn this year with a $2.8 billion valuations.

BharatPe was previously valued at $900 million and with the recent round of Series E funding which helped them raise $370 million led by Tiger global and made BharatPe a recent entrant into the Unicorn club with the total valuation of $2.85 billion. Making it the 19th Indian startup to become a ‘unicorn’ this year.

The other investors in the round included Dragoneer Investor Group, Steadfast Capital, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, and Amplo.

BharatPe lets the shop owners accept payments for any payments app for free. Merchants can sign up instantly and start accepting payments directly into their bank account and have the flexibility to earn up to 12% interest on those payments and even take loans whenever they need. BharatPe makes payment acceptance simple by offering merchants a single QR to accept all payment apps such as PayTm, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, and 150+ other UPI apps.

BharatPe was co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018 with the vision to make financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. BharatPe launched India’s first UPI interoperable QR code, first ZERO MDR payment acceptance service, and first UPI payment backed merchant cash advance service

Currently serving over 60 lakhs+ merchants across 100 cities. Handling an annualized TPV of US$ 7.5 billion, having processed 6 crore+ UPI transactions a month.

The RBI has issued an approval to Centrum Financial Services Limited to establish a Small Finance Bank (SFB) and Resilient Innovations Private Limited (BharatPe) The SFB will be guided by the directions and timelines of the RBI on the amalgamation of Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative Bank Limited.

This is the same company that created a buzz earlier by announcing a unique way of giving bonuses with BMWs and other expensive gadgets to their employees.